such tyranny as this, he went, directly the waggons left, to M. le Duc
d'Orleans, and complained of what had occurred. The Regent was much
annoyed; he saw the dangerous results, and the pernicious example of so
violent a proceeding, directed against an unsupported foreigner, whom
rather lightly he had just made comptroller-general. He flew into a
violent rage, sent for the Prince de Conti, and, contrary to his nature,
reprimanded him so severely, that he was silenced and cried for mercy.
But annoyed at having failed, and still more at the sharp scolding he had
received, the Prince de Conti consoled himself, like a woman, by
spreading all sorts of reports against Law, which caused him but little
fear, and did him still less harm, but which did slight honour to M. le
Prince de Conti, because the cause of these reports, and also the large
sums he had drawn from the financier, were not unknown to the public;
blame upon him was general, and all the more heavy, because Law had
fallen out of public favour, which a mere trifle had changed into spite
and indignation.

This is the trifle. The Marechal de Villeroy, incapable of inspiring the
King with any solid ideas, adoring even to worship the deceased King,
full of wind, and lightness, and frivolity, and of sweet recollections of
his early years, his grace at fetes and ballets, his splendid
gallantries, wished that the King, in imitation of the deceased monarch,
should dance in a ballet. It was a little too early to think of this.
This pleasure seemed a trifle too much of pain to so young a King; his
timidity should have been vanquished by degrees, in order to accustom him
to society which he feared, before engaging him to show himself off in
public, and dance upon a stage.

The deceased King,--educated in a brilliant Court, where rule and
grandeur were kept up with much distinction, and where continual
intercourse with ladies, the Queen-mother, and others of the Court, had
early fashioned and emboldened him, had relished and excelled in these
sorts of fetes and amusements, amid a crowd of young people of both
sexes, who all rightfully bore the names of nobility, and amongst whom
scarcely any of humble birth were mixed, for we cannot call thus some
three or four of coarser stuff, who were admitted simply for the purpose
of adding strength and beauty to the ballet, by the grace of their faces
and the elegance of their movements, with a few dancing-masters to
regulate and